They Staggered Across The Field

*



I have drawn a man with a spade, that is un bècheur [a digger], five times over in a variety of poses, a sower twice, a girl with a broom twice. Then a woman in a white cap peeling potatoes and a shepherd leaning on his crook and finally an old, sick peasant sitting on a chair by the hearth with his head in his hands and his elbows on his knees.

And it won't be left at that, of course. Once a few sheep have crossed the bridge, the whole flock follows. Now I must draw diggers, sowers, men and women at the plough, ceaslessly. Scrutinize and draw everything that is a part of country life. Just as many others have done and are doing. I no longer stand helpless before nature like I used to.
Vincent van Gogh, at 28.

At other times when you happened to look, you caught him making little sketches, such silly pen-and-ink drawings, a little tree with a lot of branches and side branches and twigs -- nobody ever saw anything else in it... Since then I have lost sight of him -- I cannot say I was particularly interested. No, he was not an attractive boy, with those small, narrowed, peering eyes of his, and, in fact, he was always a bit unsociable.
Co-worker.

Though this trip was almost too much for me and I came back overcome by fatigue, with sore feet, and quite melancholy, I do not regret it, for I have seen interesting things, and one learns to take a different but correct view of the hardships of real misery. . . .

Well, even in that deep misery I felt my energy revive, and I said to myself, In spite of everything I shall rise again: I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing.
Vincent, 1880.

The other painters, whatever they think, instinctively keep themselves at a distance from discussions about the actual trade.

Well, the truth is, we can only make our pictures speak. But yet, my dear brother, there is this that I have always told you, and I repeat it once more with all the earnestness that can be expressed by the effort of a mind diligently fixed on trying to do as well as possible -- I tell you again that I shall always consider you to be something more than a simple dealer in Corots, that through my mediation you have your part in the actual production of some canvases, which will retain their calm even in the catastrophe.

For this is what we have got to, and this is all or at least the main thing that I can have to tell you at a moment of comparative crisis. At a moment when things are very strained between dealers in pictures of dead artists, and living artists.

Well, my own work, I am risking my life for it and my reason has half foundered because of it--that's all right--but you are not among the dealers in men as far as I know, and you can still choose your side, I think, acting with humanity, but que veux-tu?
From the letter found Vincent's pocket when he shot himself.



They Staggered Across The Field. There were so many warm little memories, but mostly he remembered the distress. There was euphoric recall, which led him astray, told him things were good when they were not, romanticised sordid little ventures. Why was it that so many of his old friends were dead? Just lucky I guess, I don't think so. They had chosen the most destructive of lifestyles; they had circumvented all norms, they had raced to fulfilment and found themselves hung over n teh early morning, talking gibberish. He saw them even now, younger, brighter, talking fabulous streams.

While he sat like the proverbial cormorant on a rock, out of phase and outside the normal functioning of men. He could stave off the scorn, just, but in his heart he knew it was over, he had become the thing he never wanted to be, a time server. Their brilliance was astonishing. Coupled with their youth it was astonishing. Vincent was 37 when he shot himself. Of all the historical figures... He sat on the crumbling veranda of that sybaritic household in Adelaide, and read all his letters to Theo, every last one of them. He was as good a writer as he was a painter. Time slipped past us, catching shadows.

I was amused, deeply, by your call to arms, he murmured, discreet for no purpose. The concerns of his generation were entirely different, and slipping away, the national debate moving elsewhere. Brigette is so dumb, so dumb it's mind boggling, they say of a particular thick blonde bimbo in the Big Brother house this year. The phenomenon has reached the teenage girls of Sydney, but this year, everyone agrees, is the worst year ever. And that's saying something, after last year. Having a 16-year-old daughter means I am across these things in a way that I would once have never been. Dope shrinks your brain, the latest studies warned, and all the old hippies with their ossified pea brains danced till the dawn, their long hair bouncing, the smell of their damp winter clothes filling the hall.

All of it began so hopefully, life changing events. Music that told us the world would never be the same again. Drop out, change the world. Now a new world of health conscious young things sweeps aside the power flesh. You are all mine. A big, dynamic man, handsome as, thrilled to be here. While his own pain filled shadow struggled through the day, calling, calling. I feel like I've forgotten something, he said, as he stepped out of the car. What is it that we're not doing? Why are we so damned earnest when there's so much to do.

You just need to open up your life to more energy, the self-satisfied bitch said, gloating with health. I've been snorkelling today, it was marvellous, marvellous. They laughed intimately together, the women, excluding the men, who they had been taught were drongos. So much contempt for the common man, so much self satisfaction, so much certainty. While his own frail shadow whispered and complained, moved deeply into recess, called out and was ignored. The city grew and grew, the streets became more crowded, his social circle disintegrated, and in the end, there was nothing but the coal mine.

Sons and Lovers may have filled his childhood, but out in the reaches, at the other end of the cycle, it was hard to find time to read after a day at the office and two kids to care for. Those days were coming to an end. He had made so many mistakes there wasn't anything left. You just need to make more energy in your life, the bitch said, and turned back to monopolising the woman he had been speaking to. He got up and left; the towering flats in the beach side suburb lurching over him. You could have been so much, there could have been a litany of success stories, and instead he cycled through his lost hopes and adopted strange positions in the hope that no one would notice. He crept through the dark streets, ignored and unnoticed; and he couldn't see that nothing would stay the same, not now that he was on the downhill run.



THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/06/03/2264052.htm?section=justin

New South Wales Crime Commissioner Phillip Bradley has rejected calls for a royal commission into his organisation as one of his top investigators spends his second night in custody on drug charges.

Australian Federal Police (AFP) allege for at least the past 12 months, Mark Standen has been helping a Netherlands drug syndicate in a plot to import 600 kilograms of ephedrine chemicals to make ice.

As assistant director at the commission, his job was to prevent drug trafficking.

Police Minister David Campbell says he is not aware of any endemic corruption at the Crime Commission and has full confidence in the crime fighting agency.

But Mr Campbell says an independent corruption investigation is necessary.

"ICAC will, I'm sure, conduct its inquiries as it sees fit," he said. "I'm confident that the Crime Commission's done the right thing by referring this matter to ICAC for its consideration."

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jHLyr6ennpuHhliSGVEdyY7w-RfA

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Democrat Barack Obama stood on the brink of history Tuesday, within reach of becoming America's first black presidential nominee after a twisting, emotional and divisive battle with Hillary Clinton.

As voters in the last two states, Montana and South Dakota, wrapped up the gruelling coast-to-coast Democratic nominating marathon, Clinton faced the demise of her own historic quest to be the first woman president.

The only questions remaining in the Democratic race were whether Obama would reach the mathematical winning post of 2,118 delegates by late Tuesday and whether Clinton would formally fold her campaign and endorse her fierce rival.

Regardless, Illinois Senator Obama, 46, planned to train his full fire on potential general election rival John McCain, with a daring foray into the same Minnesota sports arena where Republicans will crown their nominee in September.

Clinton is meanwhile heading back to her home state in New York, prompting speculation she would abandon her campaign, which has garnered nearly 17 million votes, at a "celebration" event in Manhattan on Tuesday night.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/alan-ramsey/finally-nelson-makes-a-splash/2008/05/30/1211654308246.html

We've been missing the point. Brendan Nelson has been a lot smarter politically than ever we thought him capable of. Kevin Rudd's leadership has not looked so harried, so under pressure, since he took over from Kim Beazley 18 months ago. Nelson has surprised us. It hasn't just been luck, either. The issue of petrol prices is incidental. It is how Nelson has "managed" the issue to keep it needling Rudd for more than a fortnight, despite everything the Prime Minister has done to try to bury it. Even the police have been whistled up to clump around the bureaucracy, along with the art galleries, all in the same week. And before they look elsewhere they should look hard at the Coalition.